"How was dinner?" Belle asked Polly as they began their adventuring for the day.
"Short. Vandy and I got into a bit of an argument about salad forks and then we ate in silence as everyone made jokes about us." She said as if retelling an old war story.
Belle laughed, " That does sound like quite the affair. I am sorry I missed it."
"You could always join us tomorrow!" Polly said in her usual chipper tone.
"You know I can't." Belle had been clear about her intention to completely avoid the King Beast.
"Well, that's just the thing. He was not even eating with us last night. In fact, he has not come back from the forest since yesterday afternoon. We've all been a touch worried about him."
Belle frowned. "You're wrong. He was here last night."
"Here? where?"
"My room last night."
Polly's hand gripped Belle's extremely hard.
"He came into your room?!" Polly asked, sounding as though she was about to have a heart attack. "Tell me everything! If he even touched you or threatened you, I'll- I'll-"
"No, no! It was not like that. He- apologized."
There was coughing and sputtering ending in a weak wheeze then Polly was finally able to say, "He did not."
"He did."
"What did he say? If he said anything to upset you I'll-" Belle cut her off by placing hand on Polly's arm that was linked through her own. Polly's grip finally relaxed on her arm.
"No, nothing like that. He didn't really say anything besides an apology."
"Did he now?" Polly asked with such an incredulous tone that Belle had to think back to ensure that she had not just dreamt the whole thing.
"Yes, he had said you put him up to it." Belle admitted.
"Put him up to it? I told that boy that if he came near your rooms, he was going to be cleaning the whole castle himself for a month."
"I see." Belle said suddenly lost in thought. She did not see. She was too busy trying to contrive an evil motive for an apology.
"So?" Polly asked.
"So what?"
"Well do I have to make him clean the whole castle himself for the entire month?" Polly asked.
Belle laughed, "That's not my decision."
"Well, if you tell me that he's upset you then he'll be cleaning. every square inch of this place." Polly said with finality.
"Well, he is the King of the Beasts-"
"That doesn't mean anything."
"He probably is very busy doing whatever it is Kings do-"
"Apparently too busy to check-in with everyone besides the one person he swore he wouldn't go near."
"I appreciated the apology." Belle finally said and then realized that she meant it. She was still suspicious of the Beast, but she was not afraid anymore that he would sneak into her room in the middle of the night and kill her.
"Well, that solves that then." Polly said, a little too satisfied with herself.
Polly asked Belle where she would like to explore, and Belle asked her to take her outside. It had not even been a week yet, but she felt like she had not felt the sun on her face for a month.
Polly agreed and showed her the most direct route from her room to the gardens.
She opened the doors in front of her and she was greeted with a warmth that hit her face and made her smile.
"The gardens are big, but there's barely even a wall separating the gardens from the forest, so you should always be careful while you are out here." Polly said.
It was easy to forget that they were in the Beast King's forest. The place of child's nightmares had a castle in the center of it with feather beds and fresh bread every morning.
"Who built this castle?" Belle asked.
"Well dear, that's the wrong question."
"What is the right question?"
"The right question is who created the forest." Polly said.
Belle had never thought that the forest had an origin. If you had asked anyone from her village, they would have just said that the forest had always existed, housing all the horrors of the known world just as the greed and corruption had always existed among man.
"Well then who made the forest?" She asked.
"That's a better story sitting down."
Belle followed Polly to a nearby bench and they both sat and soaked in the sunlight.
"Everything started with the first Beast King." She started.
"The first one?"
"Yes, The Beast you know had a father who was the First Beast King. He lived before the forest when the monsters roamed the entire realm freely. Before the forest, vampires, ghouls, all of them were loose in the world. They were very dark times for man, but very fruitful times for the beasts. We weren't all bad, mind you, but history only remembers the vicious."
"How long ago was that?" Belle asked. She had not taken the Beast King for an old man, but she had not even heard tales of a time before the Beast King's Forest.
"I'm not sure, a hundred years ago, maybe more. Time is different in the forest. Before the forest, the King beast was a human King, but he was not a very good one. He was greedy and spent the people's money on throwing large extravagant events that would last weeks. The story goes that on the last day of one of his parties, he was sending guests home when a woman came to the door."
Polly was cut off by a long howl that echoed out from the distance. Belle waited for her to continue, but she did not.
"What's wrong? Do you see something?" Belle asked. She listened, but there was nothing out there she could hear.
Polly laid a hand on Belle's arm and pulled her to her feet.
"No, nothing is wrong dear," Polly said, distracted by whatever was going on. "I just think we should head inside."
"Why? It's beautiful outside."
Polly laughed and kept her hand on her shoulder directing her quickly instead of the casual pace they usually set.
"I just know a better place to tell this story. It might help you understand it a bit better."
Belle did not respond. She knew that Polly was just trying to distract her from something. Something scared her.
Polly blindly led Belle across the castle. She had calmed down substantially when they passed through the doors, but something still had her riled up.
"There's going to be stairs right in front of us dear." Polly said, slowly down so that Belle could reach for the wall to steady herself.
"Where are we going?" The only stairs she had come across in the castle so far were stairs that led down to the dungeon. She had no idea what the stairs that led up would take her.
"The West Wing."
"I thought we weren't supposed to go near the west wing."
She had repeated those words into her head over and over again. That was the one rule that Polly had said he had.
"No one will know if you don't say anything, and I don't say anything." Polly said, guiding her up the forbidden stairs.
"I think he'll know if we go rummaging through his rooms!"
Polly laughed at that. "Oh, he doesn't live in the west wing."
"Then who's rooms are we going to be rummaging through?"
"His father's." Polly said and a chill went down Belle's back as the temperature dropped around her.
"His father, the first Beast King?"
"Yes, that's him."
"Why are his father's rooms forbidden?" Belle asked and Polly just shushed her.
They walked up a short hallway took a left and then walked to the end of a longer hallway when Polly let go of Belle briefly pulling out what sounded like keys from her Pocket. There was a lock that made a satisfying click and then the door in front of them opened with a squeaky complaint.
Polly had gone back to Belle's side and led her through the room and Belle could feel magic. It was in the smell and the feel of the air. Belle would have run out of the room at that moment if Polly had not ushered her forward.
"What is this place?" Belle asked quietly.
"It's his father's room. Everything in this castle changed dramatically 6 years ago when his father died. The Beast burned nearly everything that reminded him of his father but everything in the west wing is untouched. It's left exactly how his father left it."
They stopped walking and Belle turned and faced the door trying to imagine what kind of man the Beast's father must have been.
"Why did we come here?" Belle asked.
Polly grabbed her hand and guided it to an object lying on a table. It was brittle, old, and delicate.
"What is it?" Belle asked, placing it back gently, afraid to break it.
"A rose stem. It lost its petals a long time ago and has been wilting away locked in this room now and will be here until it becomes nothing but a bad memory."
"It's magic." Belle said, identifying the source of all the magic in the room.
"Yes, strong magic. Before the forest when the first Beast King was still a man, he was wicked enough to attract the attention of a sorcerer and when he failed her test, she cursed him with a rose."
"What kind of curse?" Belle asked, transfixed by the way magic buzzed in her hands.
"The most powerful kind. It was a true love curse. He became a Beast, and his kingdom became home to every magical creature that roams the realms. He had until the last petal fell of the rose to find someone to love him for the horrible beast he had become."
"He never broke the curse, did he?"
"No. All the petals on his rose fell off and he was left with nothing. He was lucky enough to find a woman injured in the forest who eventually grew to care for him, and even though they were happy for a great long while and had a son, she was too late to break the curse."
"Curses are passed down from Mother to daughter and father to son." Everybody knew that. If his father's curse was never broken, then it would fall on the shoulders of his son.
"Yes, you are right. His son was sixteen when the First Beast King died, and the son inherited his father's curse and became the Beast King you know today."
"How can he break the curse?" Belle asked tentatively. She already knew the answer. If he inherited his father's curse. He needed to find someone who could love him. It finally made sense, kidnapping women and taking them to the castle.
"He can't. The rose you are holding, that one is his and its petals all fell off years ago. There is no breaking a curse for him."
Belle's heart twisted. "Oh."
"It's not-" Polly had to cut herself off the emotion in her voice ran thick and reached its breaking point.
"There's no curse to break, so why the women?"
Polly took a deep sigh before continuing, "He hasn't been. Six years ago was his last chance to break the curse. He had sworn to himself that he would never become like his father and take a woman against her will, but on a cold night he found a woman wandering the forest and he took her out of pure desperation.
With one last petal clinging to the rose he was fighting for his life and then in a cruel twist of fate. She said she loved him. You should have seen-" Polly cut off completely unable to get through whatever memory she was reliving.
"It didn't matter, the humans came then demanding her back and when they came for her, she betrayed his sentiments and left with them breaking his heart as the curse remained unbroken."
The Queen was famous for having been rescued from the famed Beast King. Every woman after that was just trying to emulate her rise to power.
"Now every blood moon women go into the Beast King's forest trying to get captured so they can be rescued by some prince to take them away from the ferocious beast." Belle said, lost in her own memories.
"It's cruel. Every blood moon there are women in the forest reminding him of what he has lost. If it were me, I probably would let them be eaten, but he usually just drives them out of the forest."
"Except me." Belle said feeling ashamed about what he must think of her. Just another woman roaming about the forest trying to find a Prince. Polly had said that the Kind Beast would not see her. She had thought it was a promise to make her feel safer, she did not realize it was likely because in his eyes, she was a monster.
"The truth is Belle; I don't know why you're here. I doubt very much That the Beast even knows why you are here, but I can promise you that you have nothing to fear from the beast. He is brash and sometimes a little headstrong, but he is a good man. A much better man than his father."
"I-I would like to retire to my room." Belle said. The new revelations Polly had given her circled in her head and she began to feel very overwhelmed.
She handed Polly the rose. She was happy to have it out of her hands. The magic that surrounded her was beginning to feel thick. She could feel the horror in being trapped in this castle. Not as a temporary prisoner, but as a Beast, never being able to leave. The claustrophobia clawed at her throat.
"It's probably best to keep all this between ourselves." Polly said. "He wouldn't like you knowing any of this." Polly said.
"Of course."
She did not even want to see the Beast ever again, much less tell him that Polly gave her some private information about him while they were in the one place, he told her not to go.
Not a chance.